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Month: January 2009

A couple of days ago we looked at password resets, today we are going to look at something related – account lockouts. This is something that is relatively easy to check – you’ll see many caused by fat fingers but when you start seeing lots of lockouts, especially admin lockouts, it is something you need to be concerned about.

Certain basic truths, that we all know but bear repeating, were once again emphasized. Here are my top takeaways from that interview:

1)Listen to your customers, listen harder to your critics/opponents, and get external points of view. WalMart gets a lot of negative press and new store locations often generate bitter opposition from some locals. However the majority (who vote with their dollars) would appear to favor the store. WalMart’s top management team who consider themselves decent and fair business people, with an offering that the majority clearly prefers, were unable to understand the opposition. Each side retreated to their trenches and dismissed the other. Scott described how members of the board, with external experience, were able to get Wal-Mart management to listen carefully to what the opposition was saying and with dialog, help mitigate the situation.

2)Focus like a laser on your core competency. Walmart excels at logistics, distribution, store management — the core business of retailing. It is, however, a low margin business. With its enormous cash reserves should Wal-Mart go into other areas e.g. product development where margins are much higher? While it’s tempting, remember “Jack of trades, Master of none”? 111th Congress?

3) Customers will educate themselves before shopping. In the Internet age, expect everybody to be better educated about their choices. This means, if you are fuzzy on your own value proposition and cannot articulate it well on your own product website, then expect to do poorly.

4) In business – get the 80% stuff done quickly. We all know that the first 80% goes quickly, it’s the remaining 20% that is hard and gets progressively harder (Zeno’s Paradox ). After all more than 80% of code consists of error handling. While that 20% is critical for product development, it’s the big 80% done quickly that counts in business (and in government/policy).

The fundamentals are always hard to ingrain – eat in moderation, exercise regularly and all that. Worth reminding ourselves in different settings on a regular basis.

Today we look at password reset logs. Generally the first thing a hacker does when hijacking an account is to reset the password. Any resets therefore are worth investigating, more so multiple password resets on an account.

A couple of days ago we looked at monitoring firewall incoming traffic. In many cases outbound traffic is as much a risk as incoming. Once hackers penetrate your network they will try to obtain information through spyware and attempt to get this information out. Also, outbound connections often chew up bandwidth — file sharing is a great example of this. We had a customer that could not figure out why his network performance was so degraded — it turned out to be an internal machine acting as a file sharing server. Looking at logs discovered this.

Today is a change of platform — we are going to look at how to identify Super User access failures on Solaris BSM systems. It is critical to watch for SU login attempts since once you are in as a SU or Root level the keys to the kingdom are in your pocket.

Today we are going to look at how you can use logs to ensure that everyone in the enterprise has gotten their automatic Antivirus update. One of the biggest security holes in an enterprise is individuals that don’t keep their machines updated, or turn auto-update off. In this video we will look at how you can quickly identify machines that are not updated to the latest AV definitions.

…and we’re back, with use-case# 1 – Firewall Blocks. In this video, I will talk about why it’s important to not just block undesirable connections but also monitor traffic that has been denied entry into your network.

Here at Prism we think logs are cool, and that log data can provide valuable intelligence on most aspects of your IT infrastructure – from identifying unusual patterns that indicate security threats, to alerting on changes in configuration data, to detecting potential system downtime issues, to monitoring user activity. Essentially, Log Management is like a Swiss Army knife or even duct tape — it has a thousand and one applications.

Over the next 100 days, as the new administration takes over here in Washington DC, Ananth, the CEO of Prism Microsystems, will present the 100 most critical use-cases of Log Management in a series of videos focusing on real-world scenarios.

Watch this space for more videos, and feel free to rank and comment on your favorite use-cases.

Strict interpretations of compliance policy standards can lead you up the creek without a paddle. Consider two examples:

From PCI-DSS comes the prescription to “Track & monitor all access to network resources and cardholder data”. Extreme logging is when you decide this means a db audit log larger than the db itself plus a keylogger to log “all” access.

From HIPAA 164.316(b)(2) comes the Security Rule prescription to “Retain … for 6 years from the date of its creation or the date when it last was in effect, whichever is later.” Sounds like a boon for disk vendors and a nightmare for providers.

Before you assault your hair follicles, consider:
1) In clarification, Visa explains “The intent of these logging requirements is twofold: a) logs, when properly implemented and reviewed, are a widely accepted control to detect unauthorized access, and b) adequate logs provide good forensic evidence in the event of a compromise. It is not necessary to log all application access to cardholder data if the following is true (and verified by assessors):
– Applications that provide access to cardholder data do so only after making sure the users are authorized
– Such access is authenticated via requirements 7.1 and 7.2, with user IDs set up in accordance with requirement 8, and
– Application logs exist to provide evidence in the event of a compromise.

2) The Office of the Secretary of HHS waffles when asked about retaining system logs- this can be reasonably interpreted to mean the six year standard need not be taken literally for all system and network logs.

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